Cardinals new coach to allow "cell phone breaks"

http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/2636 ... aturephone

He says you'll see their hands twitching and legs shaking so they need their social media fix.
The number one distraction I see everywhere..He thinks that is going to help his team? :2thumbs:
It looks good for the rest of the division

We live in a messed up world. It's amazing to me that you can pay people millions of dollars and the still can't make it 30 minutes without there cell phones.

What an idiot! Now people everywhere, at every job will demand their "Constitutionally Guaranteed, 30 Minute Cell Phone Break!"

ivotuk":34y4pwf9 said:

What an idiot! Now people everywhere, at every job will demand their "Constitutionally Guaranteed, 30 Minute Cell Phone Break!"

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A lot of us here are doing that right now :lol:

Some players have lived the vast majority of their lives with regular access to a smart phone and spent most of their time attending schools where they can check them at least every 1-1.5 hours. If you want players more focused on practice and less on managing whatever anxiety young people get when away from social media, it makes some sense to pace practice more like grade school.

Still, I dunno why you would allow a "cell phone break" instead of just allowing more short breaks where players can also check their phones though. They could duck some criticism from older people by not outright acknowledging they want to accommodate the people who haven't lived much without a smart phone (and regular access to it).

potty breaks, lunch breaks, smoke breaks,(vaping and medicinal Marijuana for pain) morning breaks, afternoon breaks, and now cell phone breaks, when are they gonna practice?

kidhawk":sdidngla said:

ivotuk":sdidngla said:

What an idiot! Now people everywhere, at every job will demand their "Constitutionally Guaranteed, 30 Minute Cell Phone Break!"

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A lot of us here are doing that right now :lol:

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Right?

"In the real world, you don't get to goof around on your phone all willy nilly at work"
"Huh, I'm kinda glad I don't live in the real world then. Damn you IT for letting me have it all!"

BirdsCommaAngry":jo1fxe7w said:

Some players have lived the vast majority of their lives with regular access to a smart phone and spent most of their time attending schools where they can check them at least every 1-1.5 hours. If you want players more focused on practice and less on managing whatever anxiety young people get when away from social media, it makes some sense to pace practice more like grade school.

Still, I dunno why you would allow a "cell phone break" instead of just allowing more short breaks where players can also check their phones though. They could duck some criticism from older people by not outright acknowledging they want to accommodate the people who haven't lived much without a smart phone (and regular access to it).

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I think I'd force players to talk about what they're checking and why it can't wait. After every. single. break.

mrt144":3k8yp8e3 said:

I think I'd force players to talk about what they're checking and why it can't wait. After every. single. break.

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That's a lot of time spent talking about something that probably can't be fixed with just a conversation. You're basically taking on years of life experience training young people that social media = rewarding and social media = accessible at least every 1-1.5 hours. It's not that it can't wait but it's just uncomfortable to wait. I don't think it's possible to talk people out of that discomfort (and any distraction it might pose when trying to coach players). Might be better off accepting young people now are, more or less, addicted to this stuff and deciding to work around that instead of fighting it.

BirdsCommaAngry":1srcnm1y said:

mrt144":1srcnm1y said:

I think I'd force players to talk about what they're checking and why it can't wait. After every. single. break.

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That's a lot of time spent talking about something that probably can't be fixed with just a conversation. You're basically taking on years of life experience training young people that social media = rewarding and social media = accessible at least every 1-1.5 hours. It's not that it can't wait but it's just uncomfortable to wait. I don't think it's possible to talk people out of that discomfort (and any distraction it might pose when trying to coach players). Might be better off accepting young people now are, more or less, addicted to this stuff and deciding to work around that instead of fighting it.

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Nah man, if you hold a mirror up to their impetuous folly, it'll get tiresome for them to explain their thrall-like nature with their phone. If they don't want to explain why it is so important to have this in lieu of practicing football, they always have the option of not utilizing their phone breaks.

What it takes is a coach's will to stick with this regimen to the point that players themselves don't want to make use of it because it comes with a ton of explaining as to why a player really needed to like a meme.

I hear ya, I am a total phone monkey who is constantly checking something - work email, twitter, various news outlets, etc etc. But if I had to explain every single interaction with my phone (and when I am pressed to do so by people around me) I find myself less willing to capitulate to it's hypnotic gaze.

I do a lot of training in my office and despite my nature, I insist on confiscating cell phones during trainings, mine included. I recognize a fault in myself with attention and it helps me stay on track when everyone else is on track. This is hard to impress upon dudes in their 20s when they don't have cognizance of how small things build on one another and lead to big things.

I'm all for having folks have decompression time at the office in the midst of a work day - but this ain't it. I know that a lot of you will laugh, but imagine if they spent that decompression time doing things like...playing a strategy game together, working on a building project like a shed for phone time, collaborate on writing something meaningful to the players, etc etc. There are so many ways to scratch this itch and cell phones are dead ends in holistic productive hierarchy building.

Bring a limb shredder to practice, ask for their phones or explain that if not their phones then their careers will be shredded from not getting practice and reps and paying attention.

Should clean up a lot the first day, if not you know who isn't really interested in football.

chris98251":2dy35c9c said:

Bring a limb shredder to practice, ask for their phones or explain that if not their phones then their careers will be shredded from not getting practice and reps and paying attention.

Should clean up a lot the first day, if not you know who isn't really interested in football.

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There's a deeper fissure here that BirdsCommaAngry gets at:

People who have been accustomed to constant phone use since their childhoods don't see how it is a dichotomous choice - why can't I be like most Americans of my cohort who interact with these devices on an hourly basis at least AND play football proficiently.

I know we pass around pet social theories on how the internet and smart phones have impacted society but I think more than anything, the ability to find information at a finger swipe has broken down some notions of there being limited attention that you have to harness into task based focus. There is less impetus to build a framework of HOW to accomplish things even as basic as accruing knowledge because of the illusion of good information quickly at your fingers.

By the same token, this same limited attention is being pulled myriad directions by these tools inherently to the extent that people are self deluded into thinking they CAN keep 8 plates spinning in their life at all times because the technology seemingly allows for that possibility, even if in practice most wind up spread too thin all over the place to even spin 3 plates.

To another point - there very well might be only 500 dudes in the NFL who are super serious about football to the extent you'd like. Not just as a profession they gravitated to by virtue of their athleticism, opportunities, and luck but a life calling and prism that helps them contemplate and interact with the world. Any given profession will have some non trivial amount of people involved with it that are just there to pay bills and facilitate things they'd rather be doing but can't without the dollars.

And especially within a profession like football, there is a whole other life that begins when your playing days are over. A cognizance of the crapshoot nature of the NFL might preclude full vestment by players as they are fully aware that NFL is a temporary situation with short term upsides and long term downsides. If you played your way through college and were good enough to warrant a flyer in the draft, you might count your blessings and maximize the cash as soon as possible and just go through the motions to prepare for life after. Yes this seems cynical but when you've put in the work to realize that outcome, that's your prerogative as much as it hurts the concept of team.

But let's take a step back and realize that as much as we love football and the Hawks, we have a facile relationship to the sport in comparison to the people who play it. Trying to impress a military work ethic for a decadent multibillion dollar entertainment enterprise that has a limited span for labor participants seems like a hard sale, especially if in the process that military work ethic doesn't yield results...GREG SCHIANO...

chris98251":3vq0aetr said:

Bring a limb shredder to practice, ask for their phones or explain that if not their phones then their careers will be shredded from not getting practice and reps and paying attention.

Should clean up a lot the first day, if not you know who isn't really interested in football.

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It's probably not that simple:

-Even without a phone a player can still be habitually wondering if their posts are getting likes and comments instead being completely mentally present for practice. Removing the tool for the habit doesn't remove the habit.
-Some of those guys you'd cut might be early selections you're depending on to make/keep the team competitive or push it over the top.
-Some of those cuts are also going to be guys who wash out of your system for not seeming interested but flourish under more player-oriented coaches. A player might be interested in football but not so much in football under a coach who comes off as caring more about exerting control than the wants of his players.

BirdsCommaAngry":y450rvyr said:

chris98251":y450rvyr said:

Bring a limb shredder to practice, ask for their phones or explain that if not their phones then their careers will be shredded from not getting practice and reps and paying attention.

Should clean up a lot the first day, if not you know who isn't really interested in football.

Click to expand...

It's probably not that simple:

-Even without a phone a player can still be habitually wondering if their posts are getting likes and comments instead being completely mentally present for practice. Removing the tool for the habit doesn't remove the habit.
-Some of those guys you'd cut might be early selections you're depending on to make/keep the team competitive or push it over the top.
-Some of those cuts are also going to be guys who wash out of your system for not seeming interested but flourish under more player-oriented coaches. A player might be interested in football but not so much in football under a coach who comes off as caring more about exerting control than the wants of his players.

Click to expand...

Would you want a player that is great 50 percent of the time or one that is good 100 percent of the time.

It has been proven the distraction of Cell phone use and texting and social media impacts productivity in many areas because of lack of focus and attention on what ever task is at hand.

chris98251":i843nxaf said:

BirdsCommaAngry":i843nxaf said:

chris98251":i843nxaf said:

Bring a limb shredder to practice, ask for their phones or explain that if not their phones then their careers will be shredded from not getting practice and reps and paying attention.

Should clean up a lot the first day, if not you know who isn't really interested in football.

Click to expand...

It's probably not that simple:

-Even without a phone a player can still be habitually wondering if their posts are getting likes and comments instead being completely mentally present for practice. Removing the tool for the habit doesn't remove the habit.
-Some of those guys you'd cut might be early selections you're depending on to make/keep the team competitive or push it over the top.
-Some of those cuts are also going to be guys who wash out of your system for not seeming interested but flourish under more player-oriented coaches. A player might be interested in football but not so much in football under a coach who comes off as caring more about exerting control than the wants of his players.

Click to expand...

Would you want a player that is great 50 percent of the time or one that is good 100 percent of the time.

It has been proven the distraction of Cell phone use and texting and social media impacts productivity in many areas because of lack of focus and attention on what ever task is at hand.

Click to expand...

So there's a few things to unpack here.

1. Ideally, teams have 100% vestment by the players. But we know that reality has a spectrum.
2. This idea is to collect all that distraction into one sanctioned place, in the service of eliminating wanton cell phone use at all times.
3. My consternation is why phones and not something that fulfills decompression but also understanding and camaraderie?

mrt144":8gzyzmsb said:

Nah man, if you hold a mirror up to their impetuous folly, it'll get tiresome for them to explain their thrall-like nature with their phone. If they don't want to explain why it is so important to have this in lieu of practicing football, they always have the option of not utilizing their phone breaks.

What it takes is a coach's will to stick with this regimen to the point that players themselves don't want to make use of it because it comes with a ton of explaining as to why a player really needed to like a meme.

I hear ya, I am a total phone monkey who is constantly checking something - work email, twitter, various news outlets, etc etc. But if I had to explain every single interaction with my phone (and when I am pressed to do so by people around me) I find myself less willing to capitulate to it's hypnotic gaze.

I do a lot of training in my office and despite my nature, I insist on confiscating cell phones during trainings, mine included. I recognize a fault in myself with attention and it helps me stay on track when everyone else is on track. This is hard to impress upon dudes in their 20s when they don't have cognizance of how small things build on one another and lead to big things.

I'm all for having folks have decompression time at the office in the midst of a work day - but this ain't it. I know that a lot of you will laugh, but imagine if they spent that decompression time doing things like...playing a strategy game together, working on a building project like a shed for phone time, collaborate on writing something meaningful to the players, etc etc. There are so many ways to scratch this itch and cell phones are dead ends in holistic productive hierarchy building.

Click to expand...

There's a few assumptions here:

1) A person can consistently tell when someone is disinterested/distracted and multiple coaches on your staff can do so while also working on a task like going over game film.
2) If you call someone out for being disinterested/distracted and it's because they want to check their phone, they'll fess up that it's because they want to check their phone. However, if you call someone out and they offer no explanation or a feasible lie for being distracted other than a desire to check their phone, then what?
3) If players can consistently be identified when they're distracted and they do admit it's because they want to check their phones, the positive impact of having a player tire of explaining why it's important to check their phone will outweigh any negative impact on other players/coaches who might tire of halting meetings and drills to make the player explain.

Maybe the Cardinals are overindulging their players and will continue to suck as they field a less disciplined and practiced team. On the other hand, maybe they did the math about how much time and effort it would take to address distractions from smart phones and determined it would take less time and effort to satisfy players' curiosities with more phone access. Ultimately, there's at least some merit to what they're doing. It'll be interesting to see if they have any issues because of this.

chris98251":1l30lr2m said:

It has been proven the distraction of Cell phone use and texting and social media impacts productivity in many areas because of lack of focus and attention on what ever task is at hand.

Click to expand...

Cool. Have any particular solutions to the negative impacts on productivity been proven to generally work better than others? The solution, to me, is what's debatable here. The Cardinals, for whatever reason, seem to think indulging players periodically might be better than fighting against that desire, and I'm curious if they're actually right.

BirdsCommaAngry":3imaqzvy said:

mrt144":3imaqzvy said:

Nah man, if you hold a mirror up to their impetuous folly, it'll get tiresome for them to explain their thrall-like nature with their phone. If they don't want to explain why it is so important to have this in lieu of practicing football, they always have the option of not utilizing their phone breaks.

What it takes is a coach's will to stick with this regimen to the point that players themselves don't want to make use of it because it comes with a ton of explaining as to why a player really needed to like a meme.

I hear ya, I am a total phone monkey who is constantly checking something - work email, twitter, various news outlets, etc etc. But if I had to explain every single interaction with my phone (and when I am pressed to do so by people around me) I find myself less willing to capitulate to it's hypnotic gaze.

I do a lot of training in my office and despite my nature, I insist on confiscating cell phones during trainings, mine included. I recognize a fault in myself with attention and it helps me stay on track when everyone else is on track. This is hard to impress upon dudes in their 20s when they don't have cognizance of how small things build on one another and lead to big things.

I'm all for having folks have decompression time at the office in the midst of a work day - but this ain't it. I know that a lot of you will laugh, but imagine if they spent that decompression time doing things like...playing a strategy game together, working on a building project like a shed for phone time, collaborate on writing something meaningful to the players, etc etc. There are so many ways to scratch this itch and cell phones are dead ends in holistic productive hierarchy building.

Click to expand...

There's a few assumptions here:

1) A person can consistently tell when someone is disinterested/distracted and multiple coaches on your staff can do so while also working on a task like going over game film.
2) If you call someone out for being disinterested/distracted and it's because they want to check their phone, they'll fess up that it's because they want to check their phone. However, if you call someone out and they offer no explanation or a feasible lie for being distracted other than a desire to check their phone, then what?
3) If players can consistently be identified when they're distracted and they do admit it's because they want to check their phones, the positive impact of having a player tire of explaining why it's important to check their phone will outweigh any negative impact on other players/coaches who might tire of halting meetings and drills to make the player explain.

Maybe the Cardinals are overindulging their players and will continue to suck as they field a less disciplined and practiced team. On the other hand, maybe they did the math about how much time and effort it would take to address distractions from smart phones and determined it would take less time and effort to satisfy players' curiosities with more phone access. Ultimately, there's at least some merit to what they're doing. It'll be interesting to see if they have any issues because of this.

Click to expand...

The point of my work regimen with cell phone confiscation is that I can't divine whether people are paying attention and people on their phones contributes noise to that divination.

Then what? You keep pressing them on it. Like, this isn't some laborious task. Asking questions is easy as hell as long as you have the imagination to ask the right ones and playfully guide someone towards the right answers. "You can keep lying about being distracted, which we verily see translated into your play, or you can just bide your time here until an exit and then be content to do whatever you want with your time. Who do you want to be? The guy who lies about how he is totally compromised by his phone, both directly and indirectly? Or the guy who has mastery of his base impulses and can defer novelty behind task and purpose?"

And you just keep leading them back there. Who do you want to be and what do you want to do with your time. Some players can't and won't be cowed into attention, almost defiantly. And THOSE are the ones you cull from the team. But just having a tool to assess the relationship each individual has to their phone on the team can be useful in focusing it and maybe even integrating it to what you're trying to accomplish.

I think as a flesh the idea out more, basically you'd have 30 minutes of phone time and then 30 minutes of explain time in each position group. Make the imposition more concrete and arresting at an organization level to the point that everyone in the organization can identify the whys of distraction and then develop a team and individual plan to ameliorate it.

At my most baroque, I'd even set aside an hour a week to just have conversations about life, one on one, no judgment, just catharsis.

chris98251":jtg3gbz6 said:

potty breaks, lunch breaks, smoke breaks,(vaping and medicinal Marijuana for pain) morning breaks, afternoon breaks, and now cell phone breaks, when are they gonna practice?

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Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

BirdsCommaAngry":bbzhcju6 said:

chris98251":bbzhcju6 said:

It has been proven the distraction of Cell phone use and texting and social media impacts productivity in many areas because of lack of focus and attention on what ever task is at hand.

Click to expand...

Cool. Have any particular solutions to the negative impacts on productivity been proven to generally work better than others? The solution, to me, is what's debatable here. The Cardinals, for whatever reason, seem to think indulging players periodically might be better than fighting against that desire, and I'm curious if they're actually right.

Click to expand...

This is my thought as well. This is trying to collect it all into one period of time rather than have people covertly doing so on everyone else's time. This is more remediation of a problem than interceding to eliminate a problem which...by and large...I support.

In general, I am more receptive to plans that entertain that a non ideal situation exists and must be managed with care and forethought rather than trying to impose an ideal before managing the non ideal situation.